The Vivid Design Philosophy

What is the Vivid Sound?

Our goal with all of our products is a vivid, lifelike sound. Dictionary.com defines vivid as:

"Presented in a clear and striking manner: a vivid account of the incident." And, "Perceived or felt with the freshness of immediate experience: a vivid recollection of their childhood." And, it's latin root, vividus, means to live.

We like startling dynamics and holographic imagery. We believe that the music signal on your CD or record or iPod cannot be enhanced or improved by subsequent audio components, cables or circuits. Our intent, and the purpose of all Vivid Audio products, is to provide for the most natural and effortless release of the musical energy stored on the CD or record, without adding any colorations, distortions or editorializing. Our research has led us to relatively minimalist signal circuits and relatively sophisticated power supply circuits. Both signal circuit and power circuit are equally important. Or, perhaps more holistically, they should really be thought of as aspects of one, unified, circuit.

A few general thoughts on Vivid audio equipment:

We feel that material selection and implementation are critical for the natural reproduction of music. We favor natural materials- wood, paper, stone, wool and cotton over synthetics or plastics. It is much more likely that natural sound will flow from natural materials than from synthetics.

We prefer the sound of tubes over transistors or chips and we prefer hand-wired circuits to printed circuit boards. We have developed original design tube electronics, cables and dacs characterized by their elegant, reductionist design philosophy, quality parts, and most importantly, by their sonic naturalness, dynamic impact, sheer physical beauty and lively reproduction of music.

And furthermore...

Simplicity and directness are the twin cornerstones of all Vivid products.
The fewer the gain stages in an amp (or system), the better.
Active preamplifers are not required for modern (CD based) audio systems. Your existing system will, most likely, sound better without a preamp.
We do stereo (or mono, if you're into that). We do not do Home Theater, although, if you want to use Vivid products in your cinema system, they will certainly work, and sound good.
An amplifier is a modulator (valve) of electric power. As mentioned above, the power supply is a critical part of any audio component. Our tube-circuit power supplies use chokes and high quality film caps (no electrolytic caps) for spacious sound, lifelike dynamics, quiet operation and long life.
In low voltage applications (our T:dac, for example), the best power supply is a battery. Wherever possible we use a battery because it offers great value and awesome sonic performance.
We use tubes because they provide the best sonics and give you, the listener, a chance to experiment and tinker, if you are so inclined.
We do not use Parallel Feed or global feedback in our circuits.
Wire is directional. Therefore, cables are directional. Our cables are marked accordingly.